A Sword Into Darkness (12 page)

Gordon nodded slightly.  “Okay, maybe I’ll grant you that.  Now where exactly have you been holding me back?”

“How about everywhere, Lee,” Sykes said around a mouthful of risotto.  He took a drink of water and then wiped his mouth as well.  “You don’t think all those rumors started on their own, did you?  It took a lot of effort to make sure you didn’t get recognized by anyone respectable.  If someone with some actual credentials backed you up, it might have forced the administration to support you without some more concrete evidence.  Could have been an embarrassment, or worse, an actual waste of money.”

“Gee, I’d hate for an alien invasion to put anyone out of sorts.”

“Don’t get petulant now that we’re playing fair, Gordon.”  Lydia leaned forward, seemingly eager, with a hint of the excitement Gordon always remembered her having.  “However, you have done some pretty amazing things stuck out on the fringe.  Is it true you’ve come up with a new kind of rocket?”

Gordon tried to play it cool, but failed.  The menace was gone from his smile now, caught up by her enthusiasm.  “It wasn’t me, but yeah.  We’ve decoded the Deltan’s method of interstellar travel and we can duplicate it.  That’s just the icing on the cake, though.  We’ve developed new structural materials, sensors, computer architecture, armor, you name it.  The only sticking point I’ve got is in power.  I always figured that propulsion would be the long pole in the tent, but reactor design is where we’ve been held up the longest.  Due to your little passive aggressive crusade to marginalize me, I’ve been kept from any real research or development in any sort of serviceable fission power plant.  Every time I get close to hiring somebody or investing in someone else’s project, somebody official shows up to investigate me.  Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been searched by Homeland Security?”

Sykes smiled.  “Actually, I know the number exactly, as well as the number of times we’ve hacked your data without a warrant.  We’ve only been able to decrypt a few of your intercepted files, but it’s allowed us to keep tabs on you.  That’s how we knew about your little photon drive.  We weren’t sure if we believed it, though, since we couldn’t decrypt any of the theory or application to confirm it.  I thought it might have been something to lead us off on a tangent, some sort of joke you were having on us.”

Gordon arched an eyebrow at Sykes blasé admission of his illegal data mining.  “Huh.  Well, it’s real, and I found a way around the NRC and all your reactor opposition anyway.  It’s the one thing I had to farm out overseas, but I was able to get a little French company to develop an advanced pebble-bed reactor for me.  Now if I could just get your timid administration to let me bring the prototype over to the US, perhaps I could get some real integration done.”

Lydia nodded.  “In the interests of removing obstacles, I think we can give that one to you.  Consider your work with the French outfit officially authorized.  You’ll have your reactor as soon as they can ship it.”

Sykes finished off his steak and wiped his mouth, leaving the napkin on the bloody residue covering his plate.  “‘Course, that raises the question of why you didn’t just farm out everything overseas.  We blocked you everywhere you turned.  If you’re open to French nuclear power, why not German armor or Chinese computers?    If you did that, you might have an actual spaceship by now.”

“And I also might have given away a capability beyond anything in the whole US arsenal.  This tech is designed to fight aliens should that become necessary, but it could just as easily be used against humans, and our fellow man has been a confirmed threat for a lot longer than the Deltans have been doing their thing.  The drive alone could be put to pretty devastating use if you pointed it at something other than empty space.  Call me a patriot, or call me a provincial nationalist, but I trust my country more than the others, flaws and all, allies of the US or not.  Personally I’d rather face the Deltans with a bunch of spit wads than face our potential opposition with this sort of capability.”

The Deputy SECDEF grinned.  “Will wonders never cease?  There’s something we agree on after all.”

“Don’t take that as blanket approval, Sykes.  I’m not a hundred percent on giving this stuff over completely to the US either.  We don’t have the best track record as the arbiters of human decency, and hearing you talk about all the times you’ve tried to access my research doesn’t make feel all warm and patriotic inside.”

Sykes had nothing to say to that, either in defense or in confirmation.  Lydia frowned and then asked, “We know your goal is to get direct intelligence on the Deltans with a probe mission.  If you had everything you needed, how long before you could independently put up a mission?”

“Independently?  Never.  Windward is stagnant and stockholders are dropping like flies.  I’ve sunk every dollar and every bit of attention I could spare into this project, and the company has suffered as a result.  Lockheed and Orbital are killing my market share.  I may be okay personally, but I’m no longer one of this country’s ten richest industrialists.  I’m probably not even in the top 100, and Windward Tech’s stock has fallen over 40 percent.  If I don’t get at least a little assistance, my company is either going to fail or I’m going to have to start releasing some of the project’s developments, and that’s risky in its own way.”

Sykes nodded.  “No doubt.  You might give away intel to other countries, other companies, or even the Deltans, if they’re watching us with any sort of keen eye.  You declassify it, you lose control.”

Lydia put a hand over Gordon’s and squeezed.  “I’m sorry, Gordon.  Again.  I know how much building Windward up has meant to you.  It’s been your life, and now you’re losing it because we wouldn’t believe in you.”

Gordon favored her with a bittersweet smile.  “Honestly, I’ve been so caught up in the project that I let the company slide.  It’s not your fault I let it come to this.  What you did didn’t help, but I’m the one ultimately responsible.”

“Well, along with removing obstacles, we probably could free up some indirect funding.  I mean, we bail out corn and railroads, why not spaceships?”

Gordon smiled softly.  “Okay, give me six months and a little quiet funding, and I can give you a probe that will bring back the intel you need to go public with the Deltans.  Support me fully, and I can give you a damned warship that’ll give anyone pause, alien or not.”

Sykes grunted.  “And here we’d been getting along so well.  I’m all for peace through superior firepower, but there’s still a few too many unknowns to go the warship route yet.  We haven’t even assessed a threat, and you’re ready to fire the first shot anyway.”

Gordon’s brow sharpened as he looked at the retired Air Force general.  “I’m ready to be ready for anything.  If the Deltans are benign, no big deal.  Whatever we spent on preparations will be eclipsed by everything we gain just by being in their presence.  If they’re indifferent to us, we’ve taken at least the first steps at meeting them as equals and forcing them to take notice.  And if they’re hostile, if they’re inimical … well we’ll be ready for that too.”

“Ready?  As if you could ever be ready for anything as unknowable as a hostile alien force.  They’re coming here from twenty light-years away, Lee.  They’ve expended massive amounts of energy and resources to fly here physically for whatever reason they have.  How could we possibly hope to contend with them as any sort of real adversary?”

“Interesting position for the Deputy SECDEF, don’t you think?”

Sykes’ face darkened.  “I’ve fought for this country in and out of war for 36 years.  I’ve seen even battles and I’ve seen when one side clearly outclasses the other.  I know what to do for each situation, whether it’s on the offensive or defending territory.  In this case, it’s ludicrous to believe that we could hope to really contend with the Deltans in any sort of combat sense.  What we’ve uncovered from your plans is that you and Kelley are planning an offensive defense-in-depth, hitting them far out, heavy, and often, should it prove necessary.  But don’t you see that’s doomed to failure?  They’ve already expended more energy than we’ve released as a species throughout all time and shown off more than enough capability to prove that they can destroy us without a second thought.  Your tech is impressive, but it’s not alien-overlord impressive.”

“What would you do then, General?”

“I’d face up to our limitations.  I’m all for your probe, and I’d even back up a manned mission if you have the tech to make it happen, but as an ambassadorial effort only.  Try to reason with them or divert them, and in the meantime work on defenses here at home.  Your tech could be used to build some very effective bunkers and fixed emplacements.  We don’t know what they want, but it can’t be to simply destroy us.  If that was it, they wouldn’t have even bothered to slow down.  They could kill the whole damn globe with kinetic energy alone.  And they can’t be coming to our system for resources alone.  They’ve had to pass by too many closer solar systems and they’ve expended too much energy for this to be about simple materials.”

“I’ve said much the same thing before, and I agree that we should be applying ourselves to expanding our planetary defensive capabilities, but how can you believe it’s better to begin the fight here rather than off the planet, whether we have any reasonable chance or not?”

“I don’t want to begin any fight at all, Lee.  Our only option is to try to work out a benign contact, and then prepare for a dug-in defense in case that fails.  All an early attack will accomplish is to piss them off, ruining any chance we’d have at a diplomatic solution, and increasing the likelihood that they would just glass the planet when they got here.”

Gordon threw his hands up.  “You can’t possibly know that!  We have some pretty effective weapons in our arsenal, and that’s before I’ve even turned my project engineers toward upgrading and adapting them.  We might be a hell of a lot more capable than you’re making out!”

“That’s wishful thinking on your part.  What little you might be able to send against them in the next 15 years or so would just be nuisance making, and a distraction from developing our defenses on the ground.  Face it, when you saw their turnaround flare it was already too late.”

His face turning red, Gordon snarled, “I might have been ready to send more if you people had given me the support I asked for when I first came to you!”

Lydia laid a hand on both of their arms, taking over before more than words were exchanged.  “This is not the time or the place for this.  Let’s just take it as accepted that both of you have … passionate but differing views about the details of our defense.  That’s not what this meeting is about, though.  This is about finding out what you need for now.  We can work out the next step, calmly and sanely, later when we all have more than personal arguments to go off of.”

She waited for them to nod before moving on.  “Six months and funding will get us a probe, right?”

Gordon took a slow breath, pointedly looking away from Sykes.  “Yes.”

“And I’m assuming one probe won’t satisfy anyone with any experience in space operations, so more funding and a little more time will give us more probes, right?”

“Yes.  I can’t give you a better production time until we make up the prototype, but I’m assuming it will be a lot less than six months for each probe.”

“And how long will it take to get data back from those probes?”

A hint of a smile touched the corner of Gordon’s mouth.  “Well that depends on a lot of things:  how far away the Deltans are, how fast the probe is going, and what sort of flight profile you send it on.  Do I send it straight at their ship for a fast flyby, or do I send it in for a meeting situation?  And do I maneuver it overtly or covertly?”

“It’s your probe, Gordon.  The administration officially has no involvement, so you tell us.”

“Okay.  If they continue tracking as they have, the Deltans are now 1.7 light-years away and moving at 20% the speed of light.  If we shoot out a probe and accelerate it at one g continuous for a fast flyby, I can have some intel back in about two and a half or three years.  That includes the time to travel out there, and then the time for the report to come back here.  Now that’s somewhat misleading since that assumes we can maintain that acceleration for that long, or that a probe could even survive approaching 90% the speed of light, and even if it could, you’re going to get some piss-poor photos at those passing speeds due to Doppler shift.

“A better bet would be to arrange some sort of covert meeting situation, where we accelerate off-axis and then reverse our acceleration halfway out, while still keeping our drive corona pointed away from the Deltans.  That lets us match speeds and approach them from the side without totally giving away our presence.  That’s the same profile a manned mission would take as well.”

“Better plan, Lee,” Sykes grumped.  “If there’s only going to be a couple of these probes, we don’t want to waste one of them on a recon that only nets us a blurred picture or two.  I’d rather wait than waste a shot.”

Lydia nodded.  “How long a wait?”

“That’s a little tougher.  I can’t exactly back-of-the-napkin that sort of maneuver, but call it six to eight years to get data back, or maybe a little less.”

Sykes frowned.  “It’s the better plan, but that’s still a long time to wait for intel.”

Gordon shrugged and said, “It is what it is.  Voyager has been traveling for over 70 years, and it’s only in the Kuiper Belt.  We’re talking about something
light-years
away and getting back information in a matter of a few years.  You’re just stuck thinking in terms of a single planet.  For these sorts of speeds and distances, under a decade is practically real-time data.”

Servers appeared around them, clearing away plates and dropping off yet another fresh round of drinks, as well as a pot of coffee and three cups, cream, and sugar.  Lydia smiled and began pouring coffee for each of them.  “So we can help you out with a couple of probes, and then in six to eight years we get to find out if it was money wasted on a comet, or if the whole world is about to change.  What do you plan on doing in the interim?  Or, rather, what would you like to do with all your secretive government funding while you don’t have to worry about pesky things like justifying its use?”